The Academy - Forgiveness and Permission (Year One, Book Four) (24 page)

The door closed again. There was a click, and the lights over our heads shut off.

“God damn it,” North said. “I knew this was going to happen.”

My heart thundered in my chest. I took a step forward. Feeling through the dark for him. My hand made contact with his back. He jumped out of my reach.

“What are they doing?” I asked in a quiet voice. I felt braver since I couldn’t see his face.

“They’re waiting for a show.”

“What show?”

“Us,” he said. His hand found my arm, and he traced it to my hand, holding it. “They’re waiting to see us make out or something before they let us out.”

I harrumphed.

“Yeah. My thoughts exactly.”

“Should we get Silas to help?”

North grumbled. “It’s my fault. I haven’t been doing my job. I should have downed an Icee, too. They’re doing it because I haven’t been talking to them. They want to see me do something stupid. Stupid people like it when others do stupid things with them. Welcome to high school.”

I sighed. “What do we do?”

“Wait for them to get bored,” he said, squeezing my hand. “I’m not going to let our first kiss be at some drunk ass party, in some godforsaken closet in the middle of nowhere.”

I floated where I stood. He thought about kissing me. It brought a smile to my face, despite his complaining.

It also gave me an idea. “North.”

“Yeah, Baby?”

“Maybe we should give them what they want.”

He squeezed my hand. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Do you remember the slumber party we had? Do you remember Luke and me in the closet?”

He paused. “You want to trick them?”

“If you want to get out of this closet and be accepted, we can just pretend for now. It wouldn’t be a real kiss. It’s not like they need to know.”

He shifted closer. I could feel the heat of his body near mine. His breath fell across my forehead. He stood in silence for a minute as if contemplating. “I don’t think I want to do that. I don’t want kids talking all week about us fucking at some party.”

I didn’t want that, either, but I also didn’t want to be in the closet any more. I wanted to go home.

I trembled, but lifted my free hand. I found his face in the dark. I thought he would stop me but he was stock still. I traced his jaw, finding his mouth with my fingertips.

I stood on my toes.

He lowered his head.

With my fingers covering his mouth, I kissed my fingernails. His lips puckered against my fingertips. He’d kissed me back.

I fell back on my heels, unsure of what else to do. I was braver in the dark, but I was still inexperienced. What now?

It was as if that small effort was everything he needed. North felt for my hands, pushing me backward. He nudged me until I was against the wall of the closet. He collected my hand, pushing my fingers against my mouth. My other hand he took up by the wrist and pinned it to the wall.

He tucked his face down. He brought his lips to my fingers.

His lips crushed against the back of my fingers. I trembled. Even through my fingers, with that thin barrier, I felt his fury and temper speaking to me through his kiss. It echoed my own. He hated this and wanted it at the same time. I did, too. I didn’t want to do this here. I didn’t want to be in the closet and gawked at, ready to face rumors the next week. I wanted to go home, to crawl into bed. I wanted North to go with me, to snuggle like we usually did.

Part of me wanted to drop my hand away from between our lips.

I kept them over my mouth though. I agreed with him. Whenever we really kissed, and in that moment I knew we would in the future, I didn’t want it to be like this. Kota was right. First kisses were supposed to be special. This wasn’t the place or the time.

North put pressure against my wrist against the wall, drawing it up over my head. His knee knocked into my thigh. His other hand found my face, cupping under my chin as if directing me. He tilted my head slightly. His lips parted as he kissed against my fingers.

He was showing me how he would kiss me.

A flickering from beyond my closed eyelids caught my attention. The light was on overhead. A rattling sounded at the door.

I wanted to pull back, but realized this was what they wanted. I stiffened but remained, unsure of what to do.

North defiantly kissed at my hand hidden between us. He gripped my free wrist to the wall. If I had wanted to move, I lost my chance. I was trapped now.

Hoots sounded behind us, followed closely by laughing and a slur of encouragements and sickening suggestions. North ignored them all, kissing against my fingers. When he finally backed his head away, he zeroed in on my face. His eyes distant and yet drowning me with the passion he’d tried to flood into me with his kiss.

“Holy fuck,” a familiar deep voice said from behind North.

North stiffened in front of me, letting go and drawing away to stand guard in front of me. His jaw set, fists clenched.

Silas and Nathan stood in the doorway, mouths hanging open.

Next to them were Jay and Rocky. Jay’s face was solemn, like he expected this of me.

Rocky was beaming. “Looks like you’ll have to break up with her, Silas,” he said. “Didn’t know she was dirty.”

“What the hell are you doing to her?” Silas bellowed at North.

“They forced us in here,” North said, gesturing to the guys, who had fallen back behind Rocky and the others.

“So? They do that all the time,” Rocky said. “Doesn’t mean you steal your friend’s girl. That’s harsh, dude.”

Silas lunged forward, with enough fury in his face that if I wasn’t pressed to the wall already, I would have fallen back.

Nathan pushed himself in front of Silas. “Stop, don’t,” he said, grabbing at Silas’s arm and hauling him back.

Only when I peeked around North’s arm again, their eyes didn’t match their expressions at all. Silas looked annoyed. I knew for sure that despite Nathan’s strength, he wasn’t a match for Silas with his power and mass. Silas wasn’t really fighting. He was faking.

North readied himself, his fists lifting. “Fuck off. She didn’t want to. They locked us in and said they wouldn’t let us out unless we did.”

“Oh, is that all it took?” Jay quipped.

“Shut the fuck up,” North said.

The others who had forced us into the closet laughed, falling back and leaving the room.

“Come on, Sang,” Silas said through his clenched teeth.

Jay rolled his eyes. “Why bother?” he asked, glaring my way.

Rocky was still looking too happy that this happened. “Let’s get out of here,” he told his friend. “Break up eminent.” Jay and Rocky ducked out of the bedroom.

North grunted and sighed when it was just me, Nathan and Silas left. “Shit.”

“What the hell were you doing?” Nathan said through his teeth. “Did you fucking kiss her in there?”

“No,” North said. “Well kind of.”

Nathan’s mouth gaped open and he slid a glance at me.

I covered my hand with my fingers in response. Nathan and Silas tilted their heads curiously for a moment, trying to connect what they’d seen to what I was expressing to them now. It took a moment but Nathan’s eyes finally lit up. “Oh ... oh. Like Luke did.”

Silas blinked. “Ah. But what the hell? Why’d you go in anyway?”

“It’s a long story,” North said.

I stepped around North, tired of the closet. “What are we supposed to do now?”

“I don’t know,” North said. “I wasn’t prepared for this.”

I found my red cup on the dresser, held it in front of me while I turned around. “Maybe we should go home. Or are we still trying to get you guys to stay friends with the team?"

“I don’t know if we can all leave together,” Silas said. “Or maybe we can sneak out. Maybe I should go in the closet with her. Nathan, you can tell them we’re fucking around or something.”

“I don’t want to start that,” North said.

“You didn’t leave me with much a choice, did you?” Silas barked at him. “I’ve been trying to save her reputation all night and you just messed it up.”

“What do you mean save?” I pressed. “What reputation?”

Their mouths clamped shut and they glared at each other.

I rolled my eyes. “Will you both stop? Please? Just tell me what’s going on.”

“It’s nothing,” North said.

I made a face, furious with them. Why didn’t anyone ever tell me what was really going on? They thought I had trust issues? They were just as bad.

Angry, I pushed the cup to my lip. It was a replacement for my finger mostly, pinching my lip to my teeth.

North frowned at me. “Don’t leave your damn cup out and then drink from it.”

“It’s fine.” I wasn’t planning to drink from it but his snapping at me had me firing off without thinking.

He snatched the red cup from my hand and put it to his mouth, took a swing. He glared at me while he was doing it, but as he drank, his expression changed from annoyance to surprise. He pulled the cup from his mouth, spitting back out the liquid in his mouth into the cup.

“What?” Silas asked. “Someone spit in it? Good. You deserve it.”

North frowned, using the light from the closet to peek into the cup. “Someone put something in it.”

Silas and Nathan’s eyes went wide. I glanced from them to North and back. “Why? What is it?”

“I don’t know,” North said, his eyes swinging back and forth as if thinking. “I swallowed something. A pill, I think.”

“Roofies?” Nathan asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so,” North said. He shook his head. “I need to get out of here before whatever it is starts working.”

Nathan nodded, turning to me. “Sang, follow North out to the car. Silas and I are going to make one more round as if we’re leaving, but we’re going to look for whoever might have done this to see if we can figure out what it was.” He dipped his hand into his pocket, pulling out his keys and handing them over. “Get in the car. If he falls down or something before he gets there, stay with him.”

“Let’s go,” North said. “I don’t know what it is, but it’ll hit soon. It was partially softened by the water.” He made a fist, punching at the dresser. “I hate fucking parties.”

––––––––

I
followed North out of the party house. I was terrified that whatever someone had given him could be dangerous. Should we make him throw it up? He didn’t seem too concerned about it possibly being poisonous.

I didn’t know much about parties or drugs at all. I knew what weed smelled like, thanks to high school bathrooms. Other than that, I didn’t know what to expect. Was he going to start hallucinating?

What was worse was it felt like my fault, too. For that reason, I walked behind him instead of next to him.

When we got out into the sea of cars in the yard, though, North slowed, turning and pulling me along. He wrapped an arm around my head, covering my eyes. “Don’t look,” he said, and he started forward, keeping my eyes covered and pushing me along.

“What? Why?”

“Will you shut up and trust me for once tonight?” he asked.

“Why can’t I see?” I didn’t understand and I was stumbling next to him. Was this the drugs talking to him already? Was he doing something crazy?

“There’s teenagers fucking in their cars. Do you really want to watch?”

I gasped. Was he serious?

“That’s what I thought. Just hang on to me,” he said.

I tripped along next to him. The way he did it made me think there was a couple in every car along the way.

When the noise from the house died down, North’s hand slipped away from my eyes to rest around my shoulders.

We closed in on the car. I looked through the group of keys for one that I thought belonged to Silas and unlocked the door. North fell into the back seat, I slipped in next to him, scared to leave him alone.

North slumped in the seat, putting a palm on his forehead. “When they get here, you should sit up front,” he said. “If we can’t figure out what this is, you probably don’t want to be next to me when it hits.”

“Should we go to the hospital? Should we call Dr. Green?”

“We’ll call if we can’t figure out what it is and if I start doing something really stupid.”

I hated this. We were finally going home, which I was grateful for, but this was much worse. I was angry at everyone on the football team for this, and at everyone at the party. They were all awful. No wonder Kota didn’t want me to go. I kicked my sandals off, picked my feet up off the floor, wrapped my arms around my legs and buried my head into my knees. I just wanted to hide my anger.

“Don’t, Sang Baby,” North said. I sensed him shifting and he wrapped his arms around me, pulling me to lean against him. “Don’t fall apart on me now.”

I collapsed into him, relieved to have him so close. It was only minutes since we were in the closet together and he was kissing me, but now it felt like a million years ago, another person. My cheek pressed to his chest. “I don’t think I want to go to another party.”

He cupped my head, pressing his nose to my hair. “Never?”

“Not one where they’re trying to poison you, North.”

He frowned against my head. “You do realize that they were trying to poison you, right? It was your cup.”

I fell quiet, unsure how to respond. He was right.

“Next time, will you listen to me? Please?”

“I did listen to you.”

“You were about to drink the water.”

I sucked in a breath, pulling back from him. “I wasn’t! I just said it was probably fine.”

“You had it at your mouth.”

“I was just pressing it there,” I said. “I wasn’t going to drink it.”

He grunted. “How was I supposed to know? And I was still right. If you did take a chance on it ...” He stopped, rolled his eyes, falling away to sit back against the seat. “I can’t believe this. I can’t take you anywhere without someone else trying to fuck things up.”

“What else am I supposed to do?” I fired back at him. “Lock myself up in the closet?”

He sat up, his hands reaching out to grip me by the shoulders. “Shut up. Don’t you ever fucking say that again. Don’t talk like that.”

“Well what do you want me to do, North?” I asked. I wasn’t really angry with him, just at the situation and at people I couldn’t yell at. I knew I should have kept it to myself but I couldn’t stop. “I can either go out and do things and try to pretend to be normal or I’m stuck not going anywhere. Which is it? Where do you want me?”